Regular tipple cuts risk of heart disease

A DRINK every day – or even two – will actually make you healthier, according to a new study.

People who enjoy a small, regular tipple have a lower risk of heart disease than those who abstain. A review of research shows that for some people this risk could be reduced by as much as a quarter.

Further tests revealed that low alcohol intake can actually improve blood cholesterol levels and reduce other important compounds in the blood linked to inflammation.

It is this process that may help protect the heart and blood vessels from clogging up, the study says.

The news means that women can drink up to one medium glass of wine or a double gin and tonic each evening without fearing the consequences. Men can drink up to two pints of medium strength lager a night. And interestingly, the research does not distinguish between different types of alcohol and does not say red wine is preferable.

Current NHS advice on alcohol intake says women should drink no more than 14 units a week and men no more than 21. The study goes a step further and says that far from damaging health, modest drinking will improve it.

The authors, who published their review in the British Medical Journal online, believe messages about the harms of binge drinking need to be balanced with softer cautions.

Only two days ago, leading liver doctors warned that the Government was not doing enough to curb excess drinking in this country. Writing in the Lancet medical journal, they said that price hikes are needed to bring the UK’s liver death rate down to levels recorded in neighbouring countries such as France.

The new research, by a team at the Calgary Institute for Population and Public Health in Canada, says that for the majority of Britons who enjoy sensible and moderate drinking, the health benefits for the heart are proven. The review of 84 studies into alcohol and deaths from heart disease, showed that a drink a day reduced the risk of heart disease by between 14 and 25 per cent. It also reduced the risk of dying from heart disease by a quarter and of having a stroke by two per cent. However, it found that drinking heavily increased the risk of all these health problems.

In a separate study by the same team, they found that moderate alcohol intake actually boosted levels of “good” cholesterol and other blood biomarkers which might explain its “healthy heart” effect.